I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

Stupid Idea Of The Day: Let's Nationalize Facebook!

Facebook is a little like the weather in that old joke: Everyone loves to complain about it, but no one ever does anything about it. So thoroughly have its failings been hashed over, it can be tough to come up with a genuinely new criticism.

So I have to take my hat off to Philip Howard for offering what is, as far as I know, a knock no one has ever articulated before: The problem with Facebook is that it’s not operated by the federal government.

Writing on Slate, Howard, a professor of information technology policy at Princeton University, makes the case for nationalizing the massive social networking site. While Howard couches his proposal as “a great thought experiment” and acknowledges that it’s probably outside the realm of the possibility, he’s sincere in his belief that that “the benefits outweigh the risks,” and that it’s fair to hold Facebook to a higher standard of public accountability and scrutiny than other companies must meet. “Facebook is now public infrastructure, and it should be treated as such,” he writes.

Should it, though?

I like a good thought experiment, so let’s extend this one a bit. Let’s say the federal government somehow found a constitutional mechanism to seize control of Facebook. (Howard seems to think it could be done on anti-monopoly grounds; we’ll get to that.) What would happen to innovation in Silicon Valley? What would be the effect of demonstrating that the reward of building the most envied company in America — one that’s actually profitable and employs thousands of people and provides a platform for other businesses, large and small — is getting seized by the government? What effect would that have on the flow of capital?

But you don’t even need to go there to see the flaws in Howard’s idea. As bad as it looks when you pull back the camera and take in the big picture, it holds up even worse when you zoom in on the details. Let’s take a closer look at some of his arguments.

Privacy. Howard:

Few of us fully understand Facebook’s privacy policy, much less keep track of changes. People are sharing more personal information on Facebook than they think they are. And for every dozen Facebook users in the United States, one does not use privacy settings — either because that person doesn’t care or doesn’t know enough about how the privacy settings can be used.

One out of nine people who ride in automobiles still don’t use seatbelts, either because they don’t know the statistics around how they save lives or they don’t care. Is that a reason to nationalize all the car companies?

Anti-competitiveness. Howard: “With 80 percent of market share, Facebook is already a monopoly.” This is asserted without a citation or link, so I don’t know what, exactly, Facebook is supposed to have an 80% share of. Not that it’s a far-fetched number: According to Hitwise, Facebook’s share of visits to social networking sites is about 62%.

But is that a meaningful statistic? Comparing Facebook, with its vast range of products, to a micro-messaging service like Twitter or a career-oriented site like LinkedIn is totally apples-to-oranges. And using site visits as your measuring stick only gives you a picture of the past, not the future. For the latter, you have to look at mobile usage, where Facebook’s dominance is far from established.

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“One out of nine people who ride in automobiles still don’t use seatbelts, either because they don’t know the statistics around how they save lives or they don’t care. Is that a reason to nationalize all the car companies?”

No but that is a reason to make it a fineable law and a reason to raise insurance rates if you get caught (ticketed). Also it is a law to have all vehicles made for US to have seat belts installed. The Government can legislate FB to the point of Nationalization.

“While most U.S. citizens and most global citizens treat Facebookas their social network infrastructure, the firm is greatly understaffed: It has about 4,000 employees serving nearly 1 billion users.” In other words, if Facebook were a high school, it would have a really bad student/teacher ratio. You wouldn’t want to send your kids there.

This statement really doesn’t make any sense at all. Facebook doesn’t need an employee:user ratio as that of a school because users hardly have any support issues and to my personal experience, support tickets are quickly responded, in contrast with Blizzard entertainment, who takes days to answer a ticket.

Smart idea of the day: users move themselves to a social network that runs on distributed, peer-to-peer hosts. On a distributed social network, no centralized corporate or government entity controls your data. Don’t like where your data is hosted or the policies of your host? Move them to a different host. With enough cryptography and thought, a system like this can be made to work and will be the best solution to allow users to own and thus control their own data.

A stupid idea that begins with the words “Lets nationalize” you say? I’m shocked, shocked I say!! To think that nationalizing Facebook would a monstrously bad idea! I mean look at what a bang up job they’ve done with the Postal Service, Medicare, Amtrak and I could go on about any federal government project to demonstrate our governments organizational talents.

(It is always a challenge to convey sarcasm properly in a written form, but I hope I have succeeded here!)